So this post is long overdue but nevermind, it could provide some inspiration for future New Year celebrations… Enjoy!
We arrived at Disneyland around lunchtime on New Years Eve, having left home at around 6am that morning and travelled on the Eurostar via Lille to get to Marne-La-Vallee. Our hotel for the night was the Santa Fe which was a cheap and cheerful Cars themed hotel.
Fairly basic but it had 2 double beds and included a free shuttle bus to and from the parks, as well as extra magic hours (a perk of staying at a Disney hotel is being able to enter the parks an hour or two before they open to the general public). After checking in and taking the 5 minute bus ride, we made a beeline for the Walt Disney Studios Park.
The queue for the park’s newest attraction – Ratatouille – was long but we decided to grin and bear it as we really wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I won’t give too much away, but you get to sport some rather sexy 3D glasses while sitting aboard a rat-shaped car. The ride itself is basically a 4D experience from the point of view of Remy the rat. It’s very cleverly done and definitely not one to be missed!
The plan was to follow this up with Crush’s Coaster but we couldn’t face another 1hr+ queue so opted for the Studio Tram Tour which had a queue time of just 15 minutes. This is a little tour taking you through some of the studio sets, with some great special effects at the end. I’d say if the queues are short its worth a go but if you’re pressed for time then give it a miss.
After the gentle pace of the tram tour we chose Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith as our next ride. Much to our disappointment, the ride broke down while we were queuing for this one, the silver lining here being that at least we were in the indoor portion of the queue for our wait and not out in the cold. All I can remember from this ride was neon lights, super speeds, twist and turns… oh and the Aerosmith soundtrack!
By this point we decided to go get ourselves an early dinner, so keeping in with the rock n roll theme we walked over to Disney Village to get our fill of burgers and fries at Annette’s Diner, a 1950s American themed diner where the waiters and waitresses glide about on rollerskates.
Turns out there were only about 2 waiters actually wearing rollerskates but oh well, the food was pretty good and there was plenty of it!
To let our food settle down, we took a slow amble over to the main park (Disneyland Park) and took some pretty pictures of all the festive décor that was lacking at the studios park. Gotta hand it to them, the folks at Disney sure know how to create an atmosphere!
We had a little look around the shops and then decided to go on the It’s a small world ride, which I swear had a slightly more festive and less annoying tune to it than usual (well from my experience of the one in Orlando anyway!). The queue was pretty fast moving for this one so we still had time to kill before the firework display. After a bit of running around checking out ride times, we decided that all we really fancied was a sit-down in the warm with a nice cup of tea so we made our way to Café Hyperion over by Space Mountain.
I think we queued longer for that cup of tea than we would have done had we chosen to go on a ride instead! Ridiculous!
We weren’t really sure which park to be in when the clock struck 12 and after much asking around we decided to stay in the Disneyland Park to watch the night time spectacular show against the backdrop of Sleeping Beauty castle – this was the highlight of the day! The theme was Frozen but there was a good mix of other characters in there too.
Once the fireworks were over, there was a mass crawl to the exit. The park was closing at 1am that day but we were beat and slowly retreated back to the warmth and comfort of our hotel room before another day of theme park fun!
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